The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Executive Quotes

By TGRStaff, on May 26th, 2007

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Executive Quotes

Written by Cain141

Published by CroTech

We’ve all heard them, those special characters in the gaming realm that are just oh so quotable. Whether it be just a funny remark, some strange off hand comment, a phrase taken out of context, or even the down right bizarre, the following quotes have been compiled to pay homage to those wonderful men who said them. If your careers ever tank, you may have a future in comedy.

“Mark your calendars: January 30th 2007 will be the most significant day in gaming for the next several years.”

Is it just me, or does no one else feel that was really a breathtaking day? If you even remember what it was that occurred, you deserve a prize.

“Let me elaborate a little more on why being a designer is akin to being in the porn industry. You know how in the porn industry there are a handful of really famous porn stars that make a ton of money and get to dictate which movies/scenes they are doing? On the other hand there are a ton of girls doing some downright nasty things for barely any money thinking that one day they might be the next Jenna Jameson?”

Thanks Derek, who doesn’t love a good porn metaphor. Either way, you made me laugh and got your point across.

“It’s [the Playstation 3] probably too cheap”

“This is the PS3 price. Expensive, cheap – we don’t want you to think of it in terms of game machines. For instance, is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It’s a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem.”

“If there’s only one piece of advice that I could give to the managers of third party companies, it would be that a lot of times it seems that when they’re putting games out on Nintendo hardware, those games are being developed by their third-string team or their fourth-string team. Maybe that’s because they see those products as being unique projects or somewhat smaller-scale projects.”

“Price setting is always a headache for us. No game machines are comparable to the PS3, which is neither a genuine game console, home electronics [product] nor a personal computer. It is a new kind of product…

[It will be] consumers who decide whether it’s expensive or cheap. If a product offers charm, then buyers will be convinced”

I think we realized this. Unfortunately, the charm hasn’t out weighed the price. Which leads to the next one.

“I am pretty sure if you asked just about any real gamer out there if they would like to have a PS3, their answer would be a resounding “Yes!” I think a lot of this goes back to the proliferation of the Internet, where a very vocal minority can make a lot of noise and potentially alter perceptions of the masses, whether they are accurate or not. A lot of this, naturally, is driven by the media who seem focused on taking swipes at us lately, without taking in the full picture.”

Dave Karakker, Sony ’s Director of Corporate Communications (Gamepro Interview)
We all know you have a tough job, and take a lot of flak from the media, but did you ever consider that Ol’ Ken might have hit the nail on the head? Don’t worry Microsoft isn’t doing much better with press relations if you look at this next quote.

“I can’t comment on failure rates, because it’s just not something – it’s a moving target. What this consumer should worry about is the way that we’ve treated him. Y’know, things break, and if we’ve treated him well and fixed his problem, that’s something that we’re focused on right now. I’m not going to comment on individual failure rates because I’m shipping in 36 countries and it’s a complex business.”

We all know things break, but that failure rate has to be in the double digits. It’s a fairly big problem.

“It’s about getting people to interact with the games console, regardless of whether they do it for 30 hours a week or ten hours a week, whether it’s my mum or my sister or my daughter. Those are the people we need to get. If you’re going to hit 100 million you need to address that market. We’re still finding ways to be able to do that, but we will. I absolutely guarantee that we will.”

A lot of people have considered this a claim he will get ten million. He will probably hit 100 million repaired boxes before that ever happens.

“Nobody is concerned anymore about backwards compatibility. We under promised and over delivered on that. It’s a very complicated thing… very complex work. I’m just stunned that we have hundreds of games that are backwards compatible.

He added: “more are coming, but at some point, you just go, there’s enough, let’s move on, or people aren’t as worried about a game being backwards compatible – and I like to think we’ve upheld our end of the bargain in making at least two or maybe three hundred games backwards compat.”

Last time I checked, many of us who can’t afford to keep our last gen console would love to be able to keep our gaming library. Back compat is always nice, but in the end future games do matter more.

“I could make Halo. It’s not that I couldn’t design that game. It’s just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play.”

While everyone loves artistic integrity, when it comes time to look at your wallet, everyone wishes they had made Halo.

“You can communicate to a new cybercity,” “This will be the ideal home server. Did you see the movie ’The Matrix’? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into ’The Matrix’!”

Last time I checked, the PS3 isn’t “4D.” And the Matrix, well it’s nothing like a PS3.

“In a lot of instances, it (the Wii) will be a No. 2 box because it’s priced accordingly. The fear I would have is that people will buy the box and only play a few games. I think you’ll pull it out at parties. It’s fun for a few minutes, but I’m not sure (how long that will last).”

“I think Peter Moore is exactly right. I think Nintendo will be the second system consumers purchase after PlayStation 3. I haven’t had a chance to check out the Wii myself, but Nintendo has a great history of innovation and has always done great things for gaming and long may they do so. But as it relates to our strategy they are very much in a different market.”

“I know what Peter was getting at with his price point issue but he’s not comparing apples to oranges. He’s not even comparing the same kind of food products at all. It’s clearly a case that PlayStation 3’s price is justified by PlayStation 3’s value. That’s what consumers base their purchasing decisions on — value.”

Please stop stressing value. Consumers understand value in relation to price. Last time I checked, they decided whether something is worth buying.

“My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers. The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over wifi, even the video signal.”

It’s going to be hard to take down the consoles easy insert and play technology and split screen multiplayer.. It seems weird to think that both Xbox and Ps3 could disappear.

“It is not in Sony’s DNA to be able to get that up and running from zero. We learned from the get go that you want single gamer profiles, you want consistent presence. I want to know where you are and what you’re playing.

It’s going to take them a couple of years to get up to speed on this. And I’m not sure that they necessarily have the talent, or that it’s built into who they are as a company.”

Do you really need to bash Sony to make yourself look good. We know Xbox currently has better multiplayer. While I was compiling this, I kept wondering what quote I should end it with. I decided this somewhat apocalyptic description of “the console war” should be heard last.

“Too many powerful consoles can’t coexist. It’s like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction.”